Aurora
by The Readers Muse
Summary: Kate told him about Kyle as he healed.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own "Terminator: Salvation" or the Terminator series. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

 **Authors Note #1:** I wanted to focus a bit on John's thoughts after meeting Kyle, while he is recovering from heart surgery.

 **Disclaimer:** adult language, discussion of surgery/injury, angst, drama.

 **Aurora**

Kate told him about Kyle as he healed.

How he ate like a bird and was way too skinny. With his ribs like a puzzle you could touch from the outside in. Having definition, but only in that mildly worrying way. The one that clipped out buzzwords like osteoporosis and malnutrition if they aren't brought into check in time.

She told him about how whenever he was shooed away from his bedside he followed her around like a lost duckling. Interested in everything and everyone one moment before lapsing off into an hour-long silence at the drop of a hat. Somehow managing to be old and young in a strange influx of ways.

She told him how she'd caught him sleeping with his eyes open. Not once or even twice, but after every meal. One hand clutched around the straps of his pack, the other firm around Star's smaller one. Too used to having to run at a moment's notice to trust that this place wouldn't be like all the others. Breakable and temporary.

She told him how the two of them had listened to him on the radio. How they'd believed it. _All of it._ That they were _all_ the Resistance. Even if they were small and alone. Kyle told her the whole thing between mouthfuls of runny oatmeal. How he'd gotten to know him - _to trust him_ \- before they'd even met. Something he found especially ironic considering it was exactly how he'd grown up. Knowing his father through his mother, his reflection and the relentlessness of the machines, long before he met him.

Through the haze of drugs and exhaustion he begged to hear every story again and again. Every inflection, every observation, every cut off conversation or moment where Kate had just caught the kid smiling.

It didn't matter.

He was hungry for them.

 _Greedy._

Desperately wanting to know this person who was going to grow up at his side. Who was going to become his friend, his right hand and one of the world's saviors all in a span of a few decades. Probably less.

He'd gotten himself this far on the promise of this small, sad little reward.

 _The chance to know him._

It wasn't much and there was so much about it that was going to be messed up and jagged. But it was here regardless. _His_. The chance to know his father even through his father would never know him. Kyle Reese would die thinking he was leaving Sarah alone in the world and there was nothing he could do to change that.

His thoughts spiraled out as the heart monitor he was connected to beeped steadily. Strong. Reassuring. But still mechanical. Still not his own. It was too complicated for him to dwell on. The truth was he was still trying to understand. Remembering the blurry smudge of Marcus' face from the table beside him. A very human sacrifice from a half man, half machine. He wondered what that said about him, now that he had a machine's heart. Maybe he didn't want to know. Or maybe he just hated the fact that he didn't feel any different at all.

The harder thoughts fled.

Overruled by the pleasant haze of drugs.

Gradually replaced by different ones.

Less urgent.

Maybe.

Was there ever a moment Kyle might have wondered? When he and his mother came together that night on the run? Finding something to share with one another that wasn't death or exhaustion. Did he die before that spark of realization hit home? Or did he look up into his mother's eyes before he closed them for good and saw the woman from the picture? Realizing it wasn't years later, just months.

Part of him hoped so.

It was blind hope, he knew.

But he clung to it regardless.

Because it killed him to think that the Kyle Reese that looked up at him with hero worship and trust in his eyes left the world thinking he'd sent him back in time to die.

The difference in phrasing was delicate. Because in a sense, of course he had and he would. But the truth was, he would be sending Kyle Reese back in time so they could _all_ live. There was no future without him. Without Kyle Reese there would be no John Conner. No Sarah Conner. No one to turn the tides in the war against the machines. Without Kyle Reese, the world didn't have a chance.

A child born after the bombs fell.

After Judgment Day.

A child who would grow into a man, surrounded by metal and flaking ash.

A child who was going to save them all.

And while Kyle Reese would never know it, regardless of the ending, that was one hell of a legacy.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.

 **Reference:**

\- Aurora: dawn


End file.
